Soviet Engineers Restore Confidence

MOSCOW — Jokes about Soviet engineers perfecting ``the world`s largest microchip`` have subsided. The jeering section is silent. Pride in Soviet science has been recharged.

The reason? Accomplishments scored by a space program that, in recent months, has fulfilled the most important requirement: it works.

And according to veteran cosmonauts and top officials here at the Space Research Institute, NASA`s Soviet counterpart, ambitious planning is underway for missions stretching into the next century.

The need for spaceships with heavy payload capabilities prompted the USSR to follow America`s lead away from one-shot rockets and into developing a reusable shuttle.

Soviet officials say their space truck will be flying within five years, but science officers at Western embassies in Moscow anticipate a shuttle launch in half that time.

Primary missions for the Soviet shuttle will be hauling supplies to the new space station named Mir, the Russian word for peace, which was launched on Feb. 20.

In an unprecedented display of confidence in this country`s space program, the March 13 blast-off of Mir`s first occupants was announced in advance and broadcast live on Soviet television. Past manned space shots in this secretive society were made known only after cosmonauts were safely in orbit.

With this technical self-assurance has come an uncharacteristic honesty about past failures. Moscow admitted for the first time last week that a young cosmonaut burned to death during training in the early days of its space program.

The government`s daily newspaper, Izvestia, said Valentin Bondarenko, 24, died in March, 1961, after fire swept through his ground-based training capsule.

The Kremlin had previously reported the deaths of three cosmonauts in 1971 upon re-entering the atmosphere. Another cosmonaut died in 1967, also from fire.

With Mir in orbit, the Soviets are expected to attempt several new ventures in the foreseeable future. They plan to staff their space station permanently, land an unmanned probe on an asteroid and develop a giant vacuum cleaner to sweep frequently used orbits of floating space junk.

But, despite American predictions that Soviet scientists are mapping a manned mission to Mars, officials here maintain the cost of such a voyage is too high for any single nation to undertake. And colonizing the moon is not a high priority for Soviet space researchers, analysts believe.

When pressed, Soviet experts predict that no voyage to Mars is feasible before the year 2000. They argue that the first crew to step on another planet should be international.

Some Western science attaches expect that the Soviets will bypass the moon as `tainted` by NASA`s Apollo program. No prestige there, the diplomats explain, just American footprints in the lunar soil.

During the next 5 years, the Soviet cosmodrome also will be busy launching extraterrestrial satellites. This year, a space probe is scheduled to be launched with four radio telescopes to analyze overlapping ranges of radiation.

In 1987, a huge, 1.5-ton radio telescope is scheduled to be boosted into the heavens. Plans for 1988 include two probes to fly by Mars. And another pair of satellites are slated to be put into orbit in 1990.

One will measure magnetic fields and radiation emanating from the North and South Poles; the other will do the same circling the equator.

``I know that the West likes to speak about a so-called Soviet lag in modern science and technology,`` Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev told interviewers last week.

But the discoveries and accomplishments by Soviet engineers ``are more eloquent than any denial,`` he added.